CORPSAFRICA

CorpsAfrica gives bright, ambitious African men and women the opportunity to serve in their own countries or other African countries to facilitate small-scale, high-impact projects that are identified by local people, along the lines of the Peace Corps model.

Organizations goals include:

ENGAGE
Engage African youth through life-changing volunteer opportunities in community-led development and post-service pathways to purposeful and successful careers.

CONNECT
Connect underserved communities to the resources and innovations of a wide range of partners to alleviate poverty, enhance livelihoods, and increase resilience.

CONVENE
Convene a strong pan-African network of community-led development and public service champions across civil society, private businesses, government, and philanthropic sectors to collaborate on common development and operational challenges.

CorpsAfrica trains young Africans to help rural communities identify and solve their own challenges. We equip Volunteers with skills in human-centered design, asset-based community development, project management, and monitoring and evaluation. Volunteers live with host families in remote villages for up to one year, listening to community members to understand local challenges and collaborating with them to identify and implement small-scale, high-impact projects. Our model promotes resilience and sustainability through community ownership.

Identifying and training youth to be public service volunteers in rural communities and supporting alumni in securing professional development and opportunities.

Youth volunteers introduce communities to the locally-led development approach.

Convening interested civil society, private businesses, government, and philanthropic actors interested in community-led development.

Many factors contribute and have contributed to CorpsAfrica's capabilities in meeting our goals:

- CorpsAfrica Volunteers: CorpsAfrica's exceptional Volunteers utilize their training, skills, passion, and more to build trust, mobilize community projects, and promote project sustainability/

- Community Members: They are willing and eager to welcome Volunteers into their communities and give their time, effort, and dedication to building and continuing to maintain initiatives and social enterprises. Among the most effective community members are local chiefs, women and girls, and people living with disabilities.

- Country Staff: Our talented staff, all of them from the countries in which they work and many of them CorpsAfrica alumni, run our programming on the ground, shifting accordingly to meet and respond to local conditions. They seek out and identify networks of collaboration and funding, provide training to Volunteers and communities, and serve as Volunteers most critical and direct
support systems.

- Donors and Development Partners: Whether it's easing Volunteers' transition or providing financial, technical, or strategic support, our donors and development partners impact every aspect of CorpsAfrica Volunteers' journey from trainees to alumni.

CorpsAfrica has successfully recruited and supported more than 800 Volunteers to serve in Morocco, Senegal, Malawi, Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Gambia. 342 Volunteers have successfully completed service. Initially, a large investment from a state-owned Moroccan company helped us expand to Senegal and Malawi. More recently, a second major backer is significantly enlarging capacity and growth through a five-year partnership, allowing the organization to add more countries, including Ghana and Kenya, in 2022; Uganda, Ethiopia, and the Gambia in 2023; and more countries on the horizon for 2024. From a one-person start-up in 2011, CorpsAfrica has evolved into a multinational organization with programs in nine countries and a 130+ person staff. The demand for the CorpsAfrica model is clearly established.

Some highlights:

The first group of Volunteers served with CorpsAfrica/Maroc in 2013
CorpsAfrica currently operates in nine countries with 320 Volunteers actively serving and 514 alumni.
Volunteers To-Date: 834, including 320 currently serving
*51 Volunteers have participated in the Exchange Volunteer program, serving for a second year in another CorpsAfrica country program.
*74% of Volunteers find a job within six months of completing their service.
*91.5% of alumni say they would serve as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer again.

Since 2021, CorpsAfrica Volunteers have impacted 1,316,535 community members through 2,345 community-led projects and activities across 9 countries.